Passenger service urged in rail freight improvement bid

A series of Port Authority options for improving rail freight to and from Long Island should be broadened to include passenger service, a key planning group says.

Adding passenger trains would link parts of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx that are now underserved by city subways, and would create transfer points with the Long Island Rail Road, according to the Regional Plan Association.

The current planning process by the Port Authority "offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity" to expand mass transit, the group said in a statement submitted to the agency March 20, the deadline for public comment.

They range from expanding the current system of taking rail cars across by barge between Jersey City and Brooklyn, to digging a tunnel under New York Harbor.

The Port Authority plans to recommend this summer whether to proceed with any of the proposals, which carry price tags starting at $100 million to expand the current barge system, to $11 billion to dig and equip a new New York-New Jersey tunnel.

The not-for-profit Regional Plan Association said passenger service could be added from the Brooklyn side of the freight operation along the existing Bay Ridge railroad right-of-way through Brooklyn, up into Queens and across the Hells Gate Bridge before terminating at Co-op City in the East Bronx.

There would be several spots in Queens that could serve as transfer points for the LIRR, according to Richard Barone, director of transportation programs at the planning group.